Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
It was a normal summer internship at the Yiddish Book Center ... until the Jedi invaded our turf
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Grossed Out, Or Remembered At Last?
The Complete Milt Gross: Comic Books and Life Story Edited by Craig Yoe IDW Publishing, 386 pages, $39.99 Three or four generations ago, humorist Milt Gross was so famous that to avoid him and his work would have been almost impossible — especially for Jewish readers, some of whom must have winced, while others laughed…
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A Director’s Director
Kazan on Directing By Elia Kazan, edited by Robert Cornfield Alfred A. Knopf, 368 pages, $30.00 As Elia Kazan wrote in preparation for a book on his craft, a director should “avoid being a nice guy, a decent guy, a conforming guy.” He should show no shame when accused of being arrogant, and he should…
The Latest
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Middle East Politics Beyond Cohen’s Grasp
Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East By Stephen P. Cohen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pages, $27 The only thing arguably more horrible than events in the Middle East is how large elements of Western academia, and sometimes the media, present the region. The other day, I remarked to…
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Please Don’t Turn Off Your Cell Phones
Sometimes, the world turns gratifyingly upside down. At most theater performances, you’re expected to remain silent and immobile, as if the fourth wall had never been breached or experimented with. You’re meant to take in the meaning or aesthetics of the dance or drama, and only later proffer opinions, analyses and critiques. Rarely, if ever,…
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The Prophetic Delmore Schwartz
Even if it is in David Mamet’s sense of a “lapsed Talmudist,” my method of reading is Talmudic. When I read, I ask myself, and the text in hand, endless questions, questions that often engage with the various texts I’ve read over the years. This hypertextual mess sometimes clogs up the margins of my books…
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Bleak Louse
In Noah Baumbach’s new film, “Greenberg,” Ben Stiller plays the title character (whose first name is Roger), a former 1990s rock band front man who has become an adult chronologically, but obstinately refuses to do so in any other way. His band never took off — he sabotaged the record deal offered to him 15…
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Passover Performance Poetry
Pesach literally means “skipping” — as in skipping the Jewish homes. But also, as in skipping a beat, breathless, syncopated, throat parched from so much yelling. That’s right, yelling. Passover is all about that. Family members who have not seen each other in much too long, with their serious opinions on serious matters. The rabbis…
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Books The DisUnited States: Vladimir Pozner’s 1930s America
When times are tough for capitalists, Marxists love to gloat. That is the conclusion to be drawn from an account of Depression-era America, “Les États-Désunis” (“The DisUnited States”), newly reprinted by Lux Editions in Montreal. Its author, the prolific Russian Jewish writer Vladimir Salomonovitch Pozner (1905-1992), a friend of Isaac Babel who was long resident…
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Vader: Half Jew
Eli Valley explores the “Star Wars” universe through the lens of Jewish continuity, intermarriage and communal policy. Eli Valley is finishing his first novel. His column, “Comics Rescued From a Burning Synagogue in Bialystok and Hidden in a Salt Mine Until After the War,” appears monthly in the Forward. His Web site is www.evcomics.com.
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Leonard Lopate: Former Yiddish Choir Boy
For 25 years Leonard Lopate has been interviewing and conversing with the world’s leading artists, novelists, chefs, scientists and politicians on WNYC, New York’s leading NPR station. After 20 years he was interviewed by Tom Brokaw and now, for his Silver Jubilee, here he is with the Arts & Culture editor of the Forward, Dan…
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Books Sherman Alexie Beats Lorrie Moore
Last night Sherman Alexie beat Lorrie Moore and Barbara Kingsolver. And people applauded as he did so. A shonda? No, just the shortlist at the presentation of the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction on March 23. Alexie, the Native American writer, won for “War Dances.” Lorrie Moore lost for “A Gate at the Stairs” and Barbara…
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